Laundry was first, and I did manage to get it done fairly early. While I was there, I finished A History of Private Life, Volume II. Then groceries. Then cooking. Tim busied himself cleaning out what is supposed to be his study, but which has been a storage room since we moved here. It’s quite empty now and my own office, never neat, is even more cluttered and ratty looking. Half-finished looks worse than not even started on.

Now there are cardboard boxes all over the place. At least they’re unpacked. The place looks like it did just after we moved in, only dirtier.

A HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE was a series of five massive, gorgeously illustrated volumes by various authors published from the 1980s into the 90s. They cover aspects of private life from the ancient world (Vol I, FROM PAGAN ROME TO BYZANTIUM) to the modern era, (Vol V, RIDDLES OF IDENTITY IN MODERN TIMES). I’d bought the first one while a student in North Carolina, and purchased the last one in San Francisco sometime in the early 90s.

What strikes me now is the bloody-minded determination of my hauling along a huge, expensive, hard-cover volume that covered my entire lap to read in the laundromat. I did, of course, have a car back then.